Mississippi River bridges: The Times-Picayune covers 175 years of New Orleans history

More than 40 years after it was first conceived, the Huey P. Long Bridge was completed in 1935, becoming the first Mississippi River span in Louisiana and unleashing a welcome burst of civic pride during the depths of the Great Depression.

175 years of history

Towering 135 feet above the river’s surface and supported by monolithic concrete piers, the combined railroad and highway bridge was regarded as an engineering marvel.

When the bridge opened Dec. 16, 1935, The Times-Picayune published a full-page display of stories and photographs, writing, “In majestic silence, it takes its place amongst the Pyramids, the Obelisk and the Pantheon.”

Named for the governor-turned-senator, the bridge was one of the Kingfish’s signature public-works projects, though an assassin’s bullet had taken his life three months before the bridge’s opening.

Initially conceived in the 1890s as a railroad-only bridge, four lanes for automobiles were added to the design after the state Highway Commission contributed $7 million of the project’s $13 million cost.

Major railroads had been clamoring for a bridge in the New Orleans area, since the only option for crossing the Mississippi was a Byzantine system of ferries.

The Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish remained the only span over the Mississippi in southeastern Louisiana until 1958, when the Greater New Orleans Bridge was completed 10 miles downriver in New Orleans. The bridge was renamed the Crescent City Connection after a second span was completed in 1988. With 10 lanes, the CCC is the fifth busiest toll bridge in the country and is credited with sparking development on the West Bank.

The four-lane Hale Boggs Bridge opened in 1983, linking Luling and Destrehan in St. Charles Parish. About 10 years after it opened, the bridge was incorporated into the newly completed Interstate 310.

Not to be upstaged by the relative newcomers, the Huey P. Long Bridge is in the midst of a $1.2 billion project to add a third lane and shoulders in both directions, more than doubling the width of the notoriously narrow road surface.

Motorists have long complained that the current 9-foot lanes with no shoulders make for a white-knuckle trip across a bridge designed for Model T’s, not SUVs.